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Sunday, January 11, 2009

Saving Soweto - 24 Hours of Trauma

"A woman born in South Africa has more chance of getting raped, than learning how to read".

Aljazeera English has produced a documentary series about "Bara", which you can read here. These videos are not for the squeamish. According to Wikipedia, "Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital is the largest hospital in the world, occupying 173 acres (0.70 km2), with 3200 beds and 6760 staff members. The hospital is in Soweto, Johannesburg. It is one of the 40 Gauteng provincial hospitals," and is under-funded and under-staffed by the callous, uncaring politicians who supposedly run this country, but who prefer to waste money on perks and dinners, while the people suffer. Our former Minister of Health has a lot of blood on her hands.

"We have no ventilators available, and no ICU beds available. We can't take rescuscitation patients at the moment because we have nowhere to put them."

"On average we see about 3000 trauma patients a month. Approximately 300 resuscitations a month. That's an average of 10 a day."